Guerrilla Aging: Rational Women Repeating Irrational Patterns

From time immemorial, women have been the bearers and guardians of children. It’s easy to see that because of women’s roles, they had to develop traits of steadfastness, loyalty, and the desire to nurture and to protect. By having a male as part of the family unit, food and protection were often assured, and mothers could spend more time caring for and interacting with their young. Needless to say, keeping that male was of primary importance.

In today’s world, we no longer need men to protect us or drag home large dead animals to keep us alive. But many of the traits we developed over hundreds of thousands of years have endured. We continue, even in the absence of predator wolves and enemy tribes, to believe that we cannot survive without our man.

We say “I love him” as a way to explain physical or mental abuse. We believe that if we are loving enough, giving enough, thin enough, sexy enough, our partners will be the good, loving, decent people we know exist deep down. We go through one or ten relationships the same way. Each time, our partner may have a different face, a different name, a different job. But he is the same man and the end result is the same. We give ourselves away in pieces to make something work that doesn’t work. And then we move on to the next possibility.

We are often smart, accomplished, and in other areas of our lives, self-confident. So what is it that happens when we are face-to-face with a man with whom we feel a deep attraction? In many cases, we become someone we believe that man wants, rather than who we are. What is it that has us abandon ourselves and create something artificial? And, to put it another way, what is it that has us abandon the woman we were who this man was attracted to in the first place?

What is it that has us enter into relationships with men who are on a different path than we are? We many want marriage and/or children and they make it clear they do not. We may want to spend retirement years in travel and they think a trip from the couch to the refrigerator is travel enough. We may have found someone who is kind, considerate, loving and sexy, but who is simply not interested in the same kind of life we are.

We may believe that our failed relationship is due to the failure of our partner. But if we look honestly at the relationship, we may see that the responsibility for the failure belongs to us. We made choices that weren’t compatible with our values or our beliefs. We lost ourselves in the relationships. We traded our visions for our lives for a false sense of security.

We can’t do anything to resurrect the past. But we can acknowledge that relationships with others are merely an extension of our primary relationship, the one we have with ourselves. That is the relationship that must be healthy if we are ever to make healthy choices.

I’ve learned I don’t NEED a man, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I even supported my 3 girls and I by myself. My issue is that I LIKE having someone there. On the plus side, JD is loving and fun – but the flip side of that is his depressive episodes. Nice post!

Very good article! Something I preach daily on my own blog where I support victims of domestic abuse. I just want to point out that many women who end up in an abusive relationship are very independent women, I was one of them. I was in my 40’s, didn’t need a man and was quite happy until my “soul mate” walked into my life and I fought my independent nature because this man was everything and more than I had ever wanted in a man. What people don’t realize is; the narcissists and psychopaths of the world, 4% of the population (there are many who never get diagnosed which would more than like double that figure) ) morph into the perfect mate for his intended target. Once he has her hooked his mask starts to drop.
She doesn’t know that he has been grooming her since the very first day, he will use her insecurities (and we all have them) against her, isolate her and start a subtle erosion of her confidence and self esteem. She doesn’t understand what happened and thinks he must be sick or stressed and wants to stand by her man. After all he was such a sweetheart and stood by her in the beginning. By the time the abuse is obvious she is already so beaten down she feels stuck.
There is so much more to it than “just wanting a man in her life.
They do tend to target widows and older women. Older women are not desperate but when their perfect partner appears after all those years she is not going to pass him up. Many women have been packing the load for years and when their perfect partner walks into her life and professes his love and wants to pamper her and is everything she ever wanted, she thanks her lucky stars.
I didn’t find out the whole truth about my ex until after we split. There were lies he fed me for 10 years and I consider myself lucky to have escaped with my life, my dog and $5. I have spent the last 4 years getting back on my feet.

“We give ourselves away in pieces to make something work that doesn’t work.” This resonates deeply with my own story. I remained married for 20 years on the premise that if I just loved him enough he would learn to love himself– and lost my own self in the process. I too was smart, accomplished, and confident in other areas of my life and yet somehow couldn’t see for the longest time what I was sacrificing in that relationship.

It’s the lucky ones who learn the lesson after just one experience. I still remember hearing a woman say “Men are cheaters. Every single man I have been with has cheated on me.” She couldn’t hear what she was saying.

Renee, I agree with the concept of a “healthy me, makes a healthy us.” We should do our best to nurture ourselves and our partners, as none of us are perfect. I cannot speak to those in my gender who let their imperfections stand in the way of nurturing their significant other. After 29 years of marriage, I am still a fixer upper. Yet, my wife and I continue as a team as we work at it and have a good sense of humor. Relationships are hard work. This is why so many fail. When I failed at them before my wife, it was due in large part that I did not work hard enough at them and needed to mature some. Fortunately, I learned those lessons in time for someone who matters most.

Sorry to wax on. There are some of us men who will never grow up. And, there a few women who are no day at the beach either. Yet, I would agree that it is probably not an even weighted distribution and we men could use more sanding and a touch of paint. Good post and comments. BTG

Thanks, BTG. Yes, there are men who jump through hoops for a relationship that has no chance of succeeding. And yes, mostly it’s the woman jumping. I don’t think that it means that women are better or more evolved than men, only that more women live in possibility. Men react to what is thee, women to what might be there, if only….

Did you just hear that sound? It was the sound of you hitting the nail on the head! For too long I tried to be someone He wanted me to be–someone who was an impossible version of an ideal he concocted. No wonder the relationship failed…

In my job, I work with children who have been abused or neglected by their parents, or whose parents have failed to protect them. I see it as a vicious cycle. People’s sense of self is developed through their experiences as children; women often from their relationship with the father figure in their life, and men from their mothers. And yet so many parents continue to reinforce dependent traits in girls and domineering traits in boys, or they themselves remain in relationships in which a man is abusive emotionally or physically to the women and children who care about him.
Unfortunately, until the nurturing and guardianship of our children helps them to break out of these hurtful roles, it will continue to be difficult for women to protect themselves from being hurt by the men they love.

This post really resonates with me as I went through an abusive relationship and I changed everything about myself to please a guy. I realised just how bad it was and got out after a year, and I have learnt a lot about myself and human nature ever since. I consider myself one of the lucky ones and I hope it speaks to women everywhere. Thank you for your words.

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